


Doesn’t like endings

by Beauteousmajesty



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Funerals, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, i guess, just the aftermath of death, no violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 01:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17356649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beauteousmajesty/pseuds/Beauteousmajesty
Summary: The Doctor never attends funerals if they can help it. It’s easier to pretend that lives don’t end.But everyone dies, and there’s one funeral the Doctor wouldn’t dream of missing.





	Doesn’t like endings

People die. The Doctor knows this perhaps better than anyone else in the universe. People die all the time. The Doctor rarely sticks around to see the aftermath. It’s alway easier just to step back into the TARDIS and let the locals deal with it.

There are some deaths that the Doctor cannot miss. Thousands of people have died close to the Doctor. They cannot remember most of their names. They die as the Doctor passes, leaving a wake of bodies in their path. Their existence is far too fleeting to even be considered for the book of celebrants, even to be entered as a footnote in another’s volume.

These brief acquaintances are discarded once they enter the TARDIS. Any funeral arrangements are trivial and disregarded when there’s thousands of exciting planets out there to see.

There are some deaths that the Doctor misses, only returning to find quiet houses and new graves. There’s no address to send funeral invitations to, one day the people they know just stop being there.

These quiet deaths always take the Doctor by surprise; they’re time reasserting itself over a Time Lord. Each death disrupts their perception of the certainty of the universe, they’ll leave questions left unanswered, conversations left unsaid, and a glass of brandy out in case the Doctor comes to call.

But the Doctor never comes to call, because the Doctor doesn’t like endings. Some endings are unavoidable, however. They are as unavoidable as Ashildr’s raven. Each one is different.

These are the deaths that linger with the Doctor. The ones where even the funerals are unreachable. They cannot reach the Ponds or Rose, trapped beyond the TARDIS’ reach. Even if they wanted to say goodbye. But the Doctor avoids funerals. Sometimes no-one even knows the Doctor needs inviting to a funeral, Wilf is no longer around in time to call them to Donna’s.

Sometimes, if they’re still around after an adventure, they’ll attend to the dead. They’ll stop to mourn. But they’ll never join the mourners truly. Even at Grace’s funeral, the Doctor stood at the back, close enough to the doors to run.

The Doctor’s always running from the dead. They spent billions of years being chased by a rotting corpse, but somehow, funerals are harder.

There’s one funeral that the Doctor will attend. The invitation came on her psychic paper, one blustery day in Sheffield as the gang had tea at Graham’s. The Doctor felt the paper heat up as the message arrived, and when she looked she knew she had to go.

It was an opulent invitation, the Doctor expected no less. It was written with the time traveller in mind, space time co-ordinates printed neatly at the bottom, below a brief summary of the life of the deceased.

There was also a personal message below the general invitation, asking the Doctor to speak at the funeral, if they’d deign to attend. The message came from a stranger, written formally, likely as one of many, many invitations.

Graham broke the silence that the arrival of the invitation had caused, asking ‘what’ve you got, Doc?’ Dragging the Doctor away from poring over the invite.

The Doctor sighed, ‘I’m going to need some help.’

It took some time to explain to the fam just what the Doctor needed, but once they were in the know, Team TARDIS were 100% on board for helping to write a eulogy.

Graham had the most experience, but both Yaz and Ryan were willing to chip in.

Writing a eulogy for someone you’ve never heard of is hard, they found. The Doctor vetoed over half of their proposed sentences, but never truly explained what was wrong with them, why they wouldn’t fit.

When they were done, after hours of writing and rewriting and abandoning it to drink copious amounts of tea whilst surreptitiously letting the Doctor have a moment alone, they all moved into the TARDIS.

The fam weren’t explicitly invited to the funeral but they were coming along anyway, as moral support. They’d all changed into more funeral appropriate attire, even the Doctor had changed into a suit not dissimilar to the one they’d met her in.

As they re-emerged into the control room, the Doctor stood by the console, checking and double checking the space-time co-ordinates. Just this once, she couldn’t afford to be a second late.

It was not with excitement that the Doctor pulled down her favourite lever. She even took the breaks off, out of respect.

They landed silently, in an antechamber to a massive hall, in a marked out, TARDIS size box, clearly reserved for the Doctor.

In comparison with Grace’s funeral, Yaz noticed that this one was far more elaborate. Aliens of all species filled rows of chairs, greeting each other, or looking as if they were about to start a fight with one another.

There were no other obvious spaceships in the room they left the TARDIS, but judging by the alien who greeted the Doctor, that was because she was the most important attendee.

Space was made for the three unexpected companions in the front row, next to the Doctor, who sat and fiddled with the piece of paper their eulogy was written on.

There was no coffin, no pictures. Yaz wasn’t sure if this was because they were in the future or because of the events that had caused the death, the Doctor had never explained.

The funeral was a long one. It did little to help Ryan’s confusion regarding the deceased. They sang hymns that he’d never heard of before that he expected were in languages he didn’t really speak.

When the Doctor’s turn to speak came, the whole room was silent. Everyone, thousands of aliens, silent as they waited for her to speak.

Some were interested to hear the Doctor speak at her murderer’s funeral, wondering if the Time Lord even knew what was going to happen to her. Some were waiting for the testimony of one of the most mysterious marriages in the history books. Some expected a summary of a criminal, a thief, who worked against the Doctor. Others expected the tale of a serial seductress and yet others expected the tale of a famous professor.

No-one got what they expected, not even Team TARDIS. About five sentences into their eulogy, the Doctor began to ad-lib, fleshing out the story of this mysterious woman.

For a brief moment, as the Doctor spoke, Yaz felt like she might understand what the Doctor meant when she said Umbreen and Prem’s love made them the most powerful beings in the universe. The force with which the Doctor had loved this woman, under any name that she’d gone by, was so intense that it took her breath away, and without knowing her, Yaz loved her too.

The eulogy the Doctor gave was full of half finished anecdotes, stories with no endings. That was the problem they’d had when writing it, that the Doctor wouldn’t let the story end, as if she was hoping this woman, River Song, would sweep in to this crowded room, calling ‘hello sweetie’ and reclaim the Doctor’s hearts.

But everything has to end. Everyone dies, the Doctor knows this. The eulogy came to an end with the story of happily ever after. And just for one second Yaz thought the Doctor had accepted it. River Song, Melody Pond, was dead and the Doctor was alone. As the Doctor finished her eulogy, she was fiddling with a ring that Yaz had never seen before. It was clearly too big for her finger but she seemed disinclined to take it off, seeming dwarfed and fragile in her dark suit. Not the powerful figure they’d seen take on a Dalek, but someone who’d lost everyone.

When they’d met her, she said it had all happened a long time ago. But Yaz supposed that when happily ever after was only twenty four years, a long time could never be long enough.

They left the funeral earlier than most, ‘got to keep moving,’ the Doctor said, as if, just like that, the afternoon was forgotten. Acceptance was unlikely, Yaz decided, the Doctor was running, still running from the dead, but expecting, at any minute, a dead woman to burst through the doors and tell her to take the breaks off.

Nobody came, and they returned to Sheffield unhindered. Back to drinking tea and having adventures and pretending everything was fine. Just the way the Doctor liked it.

**Author's Note:**

> I miss River.  
> I’ve no idea if this is any good. It’s three am and I should be reading Frankenstein but I wrote this instead.  
> Whoops


End file.
